Review: Samsung NX Mini

Overview and features

The compact system camera has been around long enough now that we're starting to see more and more from each manufacturer. At first they were seen as something to take on the mighty DSLR, and while that's still true, there's also a growing number of smaller compact system cameras which find their competition more readily within the compact arena.

One of the first manufacturers to launch a CSC, Samsung has a reasonable heritage in this market now. It doesn't seem to have found a huge number of fans within either the consumer base or critic base though, but it has been one of the most experimental brands out there.

So it doesn't come as a huge surprise that the company has launched a second mount to add to its line-up, to create the ultra small Samsung NX Mini.

Unlike other Samsung compact system cameras, which use large APS-C sized sensors – the same size as found in most beginner and enthusiast level DSLRS – the NX Mini features a one-inch sensor, the same size as found in the Nikon 1 range of CSCs, and interestingly the same size as found in the Sony RX100 II – a compact camera with a fixed lens.

The sensor features 20.5 million pixels, and is a backside illuminated CMOS device. To join the new sensor, Samsung has had to create a new mount, and therefore a new range of lenses. So far, there are just three such optics available to buy – a kit zoom lens, with a focal range of 9-27mm (one inch sensors have a crop factor of 2.7x so that's roughly 24-72mm in 35mm terms), a 9mm f/3.5 pancake lens and a 17mm f/1.8 lens.

Presumably, more lenses will become available should the NX Mini system prove popular, or there's demand for extra optics. It's quite possible that this is the type of camera which will mainly be used with the supplied lens, though. A mount adapter for anybody with standard Samsung NX lenses is also available to purchase separately.

You can take manual control of the NX Mini, and it can also shoot in raw format. There's also a decent complement of fully automatic modes too, as well as semi-automatic modes, such as aperture priority.

Despite the camera's small size, Samsung has found room for a tilting, three-inch screen – it rotates through 180 degrees, making it particularly useful for taking self-portraits, but also helpful for some other awkward angles such as when shooting from a low angle. It doesn't shoot downwards, so you won't be able to use it for overhead shots. The screen is touch sensitive, as we've come to pretty much expect from Samsung compact system cameras.

As you might expect of something so small, there's no inbuilt viewfinder, but, somewhat surprisingly, there is an accessories port, through which you can add such things as a viewfinder or an external flash. The Samsung engineers have managed to include an inbuilt flash though, with a guide number of 4.9.

Another common trait of Samsung devices is Wi-Fi connectivity. In fact, Samsung's entire range of cameras now feature this. Here in the NX Mini, you'll also find NFC. Both of which allow you to grab pictures from the camera for quick sharing online, or to remotely control the camera from the free Samsung photo app – happily Samsung doesn't discriminate against Apple users and a version is available for iOS as well as Android.

To keep the size down even further, the NX Mini uses micro SD cards, rather than the much larger SD cards.

At the time of its launch, Samsung claimed the NX Mini to be the slimmest and lightest compact system camera in the world, weighing in at just 158g (body only), and measuring a tiny 22.5mm. It goes head to head with other small compact system cameras, probably most notably the Panasonic GM1, which, with its Four Thirds sensor, beats it in terms of sensor size. It also goes against the Nikon 1 range, the smallest of which being the S1. As it shares the same sensor type, the Sony RX100 II also seems like a likely competitor.

Build quality and handling

Probably the first thing you'll notice about the NX Mini is its incredibly small size. If you're using it with the 9mm pancake lens, you would be forgiven for thinking it was just an ordinary compact camera.

If you're using it with the 9-27mm it looks a little less balanced, even though the lens collapses into itself to make it smaller. If you're using the 9mm lens, you could probably fit the NX Mini into a trouser pocket, but with the 9-27mm you'll still be able to fit it into your jacket pocket.

Despite it small size, and the fact that it offers a touchscreen, there's still a decent number of buttons to be found on the NX Mini. On the top of the camera is a power on/off button, a direct button for Wi-Fi connectivity and the shutter release. Meanwhile, on the back of the camera, adjacent to the screen, is a standard four way navigational pad, with each directional key having its own assigned function.

You'll also find a menu button, playback button, delete button and a decidated mode button – pushing this will bring up a virtual mode dial on the touchscreen from which you can choose from the various different shooting modes which are available, such as aperture priority.

Before you can shoot, if you're using the 9-27mm kit lens, you'll need to extend it. To zoom in and out, you twist the lens, as you might do a traditional CSC or DSLR lens. As it's not a power zoom lens, you will need two hands to zoom in and out, which does seem a little awkward considering the small size of the camera – it would otherwise be a perfect candidate for using one-handed.

Much of the camera's operation takes place via the touchscreen. For starters, setting the AF point is very quick and easy – simply tap the point on the screen you want to focus on. Changing other settings is slightly more fiddly. At the bottom of the screen, if you're shooting in semi-automatic or manual modes, you'll see parameters such as aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and sensitivity.

Tapping any of these will bring up a virtual dial which you can scroll through to get to the setting you need. While this is good in theory, the size of the virtual buttons is a little small, so you'll need some degree of precision. You can also use a combination of the screen and the physical buttons, which may help with some of the awkwardness.

You can also set the camera to fire off a shot when the screen is tapped, which is particularly useful when using the camera from an awkward angle.

If you tilt the screen to face all the way forwards, it will automatically enter self-portrait mode, which means that there will be a delay of three seconds before the shutter is released, giving you time to compose, press the shutter release button and make sure you're face is in the right position and expression – it's a simple, yet handy, feature.

There's not a great deal of customisation on offer with the NX Mini. You can set a few different settings, such as AEL or One Touch RAW+ to the delete button, which doubles as a custom button when in shooting mode. You can also change the function of the Wi-Fi button to make it perform one of the different Wi-Fi settings. Aside from that, you're pretty much stuck with what Samsung has chosen.

It's a shame not to see a function or quick menu and button, to give you quick access to some of those settings which are slightly more inaccessible than on a full-sized camera, but it's also fairly likely that Samsung expects the majority of customers of this camera to use it in fully automatic mode.

Performance

Looking at images at normal printing or web sizes, you get an overall good impression of detail. However, even images taken at the lowest end of the sensitivity run, such as ISO 100 or ISO 200, display areas of smudging and a painterly effect when examining them at 100%, which is a little disappointing to see.

On the plus side, colours are bright and punchy straight from the camera, with a nice amount of vibrance.

The camera's metering system generally does a good job of keeping exposures well balanced, but there a few occasions where it it is prone to underexposure and you may find you need to dial in some positive exposure compensation to get a more balanced exposure.

Automatic white balance does a good job to produce accurate colours, even when faced with tricky mixed or artificial lighting conditions. You can change to a more specific white balance setting if you need to though, helpful on some occasions.

When shooting at high sensitivity settings, such as 1600 or 3200, the resulting images display a decent level of detail and appear to have low noise if you're viewing them at a normal printing or web size. But, if you zoom into 100% to properly examine them, you can see a high degree of image smoothing and loss of detail. If you want to make large prints (A3 or above), this is not a camera I would recommend. However, if the majority of your shots will be taken for sharing online, then it's fine.

The NX Mini can shoot in raw format. Comparing JPEG images with the raw format shots, it's clear that a fair amount of image sharpening is applied to the outputted JPEGs. While this gives a good degree of sharpness, and is pleasing for those that don't want to spend time on post-production, it's nice to have the option to apply your own noise reduction and sharpening if you want to.

To date, there are only three lenses available for the NX Mini mount. I mainly used the 9-27mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens as supplied with the camera as standard. It's a decent all round performer, providing a handy set of focal lengths for the majority of shots you might want to take. I'd recommend taking a look at the 17mm f/1.8 lens if you want to take a lot of low light shots, or are interested in shallow depth of field effects. While you can get some degree of shallow depth of field with the 9-27mm, with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 and the relatively small (for a CSC) sensor of one inch means you can only achieve so much.

Autofocusing speeds are quick, and generally accurate. Having the ability to quickly set the point using the touchscreen means you don't have to focus and recompose, and in the majority of instances, the camera locked on to the target with ease, not producing many, if any, false positives. When the light drops, focusing speeds are a little slower, but not worryingly so.

If you want to experiment with how your images look directly from within the camera, you've got a couple of shooting options. The Picture Wizard, which can be used when shooting in raw format, allows changes to be made to elements such as contrast, with a number of presets, such as Landscape available. It's worth noting however that some have unusual names, such as Classic, which equals Monochrome.

Alternatively, you can use Smart Filters – of which there are only a few. It's worth having a look to see if you like any of them, but it's not the greatest selection available, especially in comparison to those from Panasonic and Olympus. Some of them seem a little old fashioned now as well, such as the Sketch option. You also can't shoot them in raw format, so you'll be stuck with the filter if you change your mind about it later down the line.

Image quality and resolution

As part of our image quality testing for the Samsung NX Mini review, we've shot our resolution chart. These images were captured using a full-production sample of the camera.

For a full explanation of what our resolution charts mean, and how to read them, check out our full explanation of our camera testing resolution charts.

Examining images of the chart taken at each sensitivity setting reveals the following resolution scores in line widths per picture height x100:

JPEG

ISO 160, Score: 26. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 200, Score: 24. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 400, Score: 24. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 800, Score: 22. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 1600, Score: 20. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 3200, Score: 18. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 6400, Score: 12. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 12800, Score: 12. Click here to see the full resolution image.

Raw

ISO 160, Score: 26. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 200, Score: 24. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 400, Score: 24. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 800, Score: 24. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 1600, Score: 22. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 3200, Score: 20. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 6400, Score: 14. Click here to see the full resolution image.

ISO 12800, Score: 12. Click here to see the full resolution image.

Noise and dynamic range

We shoot a specially designed chart in carefully controlled conditions and the resulting images are analysed using DXO Analyzer software to generate the data to produce the graphs below.

A high signal to noise ratio (SNR) indicates a cleaner and better quality image.

For more more details on how to interpret our test data, check out our full explanation of our noise and dynamic range tests.

Here we compare the Samsung NX Mini against the Panasonic GM1, the Nikon S1, and the Sony RX100 II.

JPEG signal to noise ratio

The Samsung NX Mini puts in a consistent performance for JPEG signal to noise ratio. Although it's not the best performing camera on test - that accolade goes to the Sony RX100 II, it's a decent overall performance. At the higher end of the sensitivity scale, the NX Mini performs much better than the Nikon S1.

Raw signal to noise ratio

In terms of the raw format files (after conversion to TIFF), the Samsung NX Mini again puts in a reasonably consistent performance across the sensitivity range. It is beaten at the lower end of the scale by the Panasonic GM1 - but it's worth noting that the GM1 has a much larger sensor. It is actually very closely matched by the Sony RX100 II, and beats the Nikon S1, but not by much.

JPEG dynamic range

For dynamic range, JPEG files appear to put in a poor performance when compared with the other cameras on the test - here we can see that throughout most of the sensitivity range it is the Nikon S1 which performs significantly better. The Samsung NX Mini in fact competes most closely with the Sony RX100 II.

Raw dynamic range

In terms of raw format files (after conversion to TIFF), the Samsung NX Mini actually performs much better, putting in a consistent performance across the sensitivity range. It is beaten by the Panasonic GM1 right up until ISO 6400. It performs better than the Sony RX100 II and the Nikon S1 though.

Sensitivity and noise images

JPEG

Full ISO 160 image, see the cropped (100%) versions below.

ISO 160 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 200 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 400 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 800 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 1600 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 3200 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 6400 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 12800 Click here to see the full resolution image

Raw

Full ISO 160 image, see the cropped (100%) versions below.

ISO 160 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 200 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 400 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 800 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 1600 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 3200 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 6400 Click here to see the full resolution image

ISO 12800 Click here to see the full resolution image

Sample images

Click here to see full resolution image

Colours straight from the camera are bright and punchy without displaying too much over-saturation.

Click here to see full resolution image

Having a tilting touchscreen helps when trying to compose from awkward angles – you can tilt the screen to get a better view of the subject, while tapping the screen to set the autofocus point or fire off the shutter release can be useful if it's difficult to reach physical buttons.

Click here to see full resolution image

The camera's panoramic mode is accessed through Smart Auto and does a good job of stitching together an ultra-wide image – there's not too much evidence of the joins, either.

Click here to see full resolution image

At its widest point, the 9-27mm lens offers the equivalent of roughly 24mm on a full-frame camera, making it ideal for capturing wide angles of views and landscapes.

Click here to see full resolution image

At the telephoto end of the optic, the 9-27mm kit lens offers roughly 72mm, making the range useful for the majority of shooting scenarios.

Click here to see full resolution image

The camera's metering system can often do with a little exposure compensation dialled in to get a more balanced exposure.

Picture Wizard

The Picture Wizard allows you to make changes to settings such as contrast, and also includes a number of presets which you can use.

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Smart Filters

A few digital filters are available, but you can't shoot these in raw format.

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Click here to see full resolution image

Verdict

Samsung presents cameras with a good amount of innovation, more so than traditional manufacturers, especially the likes of Nikon and Canon.

With the Samsung NX Mini the company has done it again, producing something that is fairly special in the market – if not unique. Pentax has tried to market an ultra-small compact system camera, and hasn't found too much success, while Nikon has done well with its cameras that use the same size sensor as the Samsung NX Mini.

What the NX Mini has achieved is a very small size – the body of the camera is smaller than some compact cameras. However, if you attach the 9-27mm lens, you won't be able to fit this camera in your pocket. You can purchase a 9mm f/3.5 pancake lens, which makes it more pocketable, but is obviously more restrictive in terms of focal length.

With only three lenses available at present, it will be interesting to see if Samsung manages to find success with this model, and expand that range. I can't see many people shelling out for the adaptor to attach existing NX mount lenses, but at least it's there should you want it.

The audience for this camera seems a little limited, and while some aspects of its specification, such as the touchscreen and inbuilt Wi-Fi, will probably appeal to those coming from smartphones, other aspects, such as the lack of an inbuilt flash may be offputting. It's good to see that Samsung has included raw format shooting and manual control here, for those who are enthusiasts, but at the same time it's hard to imagine many enthusiasts being tempted by a camera such as this.

While it is a little bigger overall, the Panasonic GM1, also features a much larger sensor and uses the same Micro Four Thirds mount as the rest of the Panasonic and Olympus range, so it's a better system to buy into if you're looking for completeness. The Panasonic also has a touchscreen and inbuilt Wi-Fi.

We liked

The responsive, tilting touchscreen is great to use to set the autofocus point and when scrolling through images in playback. It's a shame that some of the virtual buttons displayed on screen which you need to press to change settings, such as aperture or shutter speed, couldn't be a little bigger though – as it can be fiddly to press them. The ability to face the screen completely forwards will appeal to those who like to shoot selfies though. Samsung's range of different Wi-Fi functions is great too – and much better than its rivals'.

We disliked

Images present a painterly, smudgy effect, even at low sensitivities. While the overall impression of images is good, if you're sharing online, or printing at small sizes, when examining them closely it's disappointing to see such a loss of detail.

Final verdict

The Samsung NX Mini is an interesting camera. It fits the niche area of the market of those looking for something ultra small that they can take manual control of and change the lenses. For the moment, that lens range is small, and it'll presumably be down to consumer demand whether the range is expanded further to include more optics. While the body itself is small, and the kit 9-27mm lens is small when compared to some lenses from other systems, it's not a pocketable device unless you attach one of the pancake lenses.

One of the biggest pluses of this camera is its relatively low price. It's cheaper than the Panasonic GM1, but it's not quite as cheap as the Nikon S1, with which it shares a sensor size – the Samsung offers a fair amount more than the S1 though for your money.

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